I’m thinking hard about building a guitar (or two) – I’m not a particularly good guitar player but the thought of building them is for some reason VERY appealing.

I was hoping some lutherjocks could point me in the direction of some resources for lutherie – books, websites, etc. that explain the basic process, tools needed, and where some of the parts are obtained.

I really have no idea about it – just want to get a basic grasp of what’s involved.

Thanks!

-- Optimists are usually disappointed. Pessimists are either right or pleasantly surprised. I tend to be a disappointed pessimist.

You can start as I did. I ordered the neck from MJW Customs and I am building the body. The neck is the hardest and I will leave that part for later, or the second build. I used Melvin Hiscocks Book as a referance and lots of help from forums where I met other builders on line. I have a blog on the build.

Go for it! I don’t even play and building a guitar has been the most rewarding project I’ve done yet. Would love to build another some day. I also took the approach of building the body and buying the neck. I started out using a set of cheap pickups but ended up upgrading to individual pickups and chose online schematics for the electronics, which I’d recommend to avoid sounding like a cheap China Strat clone.

I’m still working on the finish of an electric I started a while ago—when it’s done, I’ll post it here, but as far as resources go….Ger21 mentioned Melvyn Hiscock’s “Make Your Own Electric Guitar”. It’s an invaluable resource, definitely a must-read. Necks scare me, so I just ordered one on ebay—a Squier neck—and built the rest of the guitar. Expect to pay at least $40 for a decent, playable neck. I did a lot of my shopping on ebay, in fact, but a great source for inexpensive but pretty good hardware is guitarfetish.com. My finish is a nitrocellulose laquer from reranch.com (another good source for info on building and finishing). There are sometimes decent deals on pickups on ebay, otherwise try guitarfetish pickups, or shop for the brand names on zzounds.com or musiciansfriend.com. And if you have an electric you don’t mind taking apart, that’s one of the best ways to really figure out what you need to do.

Forgot to agree that Stew-Mac is a good source, but a bit spendy. I’ve decided to stick with inexpensive hardware (NOT electronics, though) until I’ve got a bit more experience, so I haven’t dealt with Stew-Mac much. If you’re on a budget, I suggest cutting corners anywhere but on the neck. And if you decide to build your own neck, too, make sure to post a detailed blog—with pictures!—here, ‘cause I wanna see how it’s done. :)

I spent like $45 on the neck, $120 or so for a new set of Seymour Duncans, probably $15 or $20 on pots, capacitors, switch, and wire, $20 or so on a generic strat style tremolo bridge, $20 or $30 on a sheet of thick copper for the pickguard (and it’s gonna be YEARS before I try making a pickguard out of metal again), $100 on Reranch lacquer in the aerosol cans (sanding sealer, primer, daphne blue lacquer, and clear coat), and I might not end up using quite all of it. Probably didn’t need to spend that much on finishing, but I’d never done anything like it before, and 1) I wanted to use nitro, and 2) I wasn’t sure what sanding sealers, primers, and clear coats were compatible, so I decided to stick to one supplier for everything. Now that I’m starting to understand finishes a little more, I’d be more inclined to risk it and go with a cheap sanding sealer, primer, and clear coat from Home Depot or something, and maybe just a Reranch nitro for the color coat. It can get expensive fast, but now that I know where to cut costs, the next one’s gonna be a lot cheaper.

Oh, one tip—if you go with budget hardware like the bridge, plan on replacing the screws that come with it. A lot of the cheaper hardware comes with horrible screws that round out as soon as you look at ‘em. It took me about 4 rounded out screws and dozens of curse words to learn that lesson.